Phi Slama Jama immortalized UH's fraternity of dunkers

The stuff of geniusA spur-of-the-moment idea by a Houston sportswriter immortalized UH's fraternity of dunkers with a nickname that fit the team to perfection

DALE ROBERTSON, Copyright 2011 Houston Chronicle

Published 5:30 am, Wednesday, March 30, 2011

Photo: Michael Paulsen, Chronicle

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Dena Lewis, wife of former UH coach Guy Lewis, shows her continuing affection for the Cougars teams of lore with a necklace.

Dena Lewis, wife of former UH coach Guy Lewis, shows her continuing affection for the Cougars teams of lore with a necklace.

Photo: Michael Paulsen, Chronicle

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The Cougars liked their new nickname so much that they started wearing Phi Slama Jama warmups, which were appropriate attire for a dunk-filled win over Louisville in 1983.

The Cougars liked their new nickname so much that they started wearing Phi Slama Jama warmups, which were appropriate attire for a dunk-filled win over Louisville in 1983.

Photo: Associated Press

Phi Slama Jama immortalized UH's fraternity of dunkers

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Sportswriters are genetically programmed to love nicknames, and admittedly sometimes we love them too much. Many are downright silly, most are reaches at best and a few are embarrassingly lame.

Doctors of Dunk? Please.

But one Sunday evening in early January 1983, after watching a jaw-dropping dunkathon inflicted upon an undersized, overmatched University of Pacific team by the gravity-scorning Houston Cougars at Hofheinz Pavilion, Houston Post columnist Tommy Bonk experienced what can only be described as a keyboard epiphany.

“That was such an interesting team I’d go hang out at their practices,” Bonk recalls. “It was a magical time. They were so quotable, so much fun to watch. They deserved a great nickname.”

Bonk penned one so perfect and so resonant the Cougars were soon wearing “Phi Slama Jama” on their warmups. And ESPN.com subsequently has proclaimed it the greatest sports team nickname of all time, although they misspelled it, writing “Phi Slamma Jamma.”

Bonk says Sports Illustrated in a story even accused him of misspelling it by going with just a single “m” in Slama Jama.

“How could I misspell it?” Bonk protests. “That’s preposterous. I made it up.”

Those Cougars were almost all extraordinary leapers, but Clyde “The Glide” Drexler’s above-the-rim machinations and permutations provided Bonk’s chief inspiration. Before Michael Jordan reinvented himself as Air Jordan in the NBA, the collegian Drexler routinely was going airborne from the vicinity of the free-throw line and finishing his multiple-pump jams with a double exclamation point.

“Clyde,” Bonk said, “was the frat-house president.”

Reflecting today on his youthful sky-walking, the Hall-of-Famer Drexler confesses, laughing: “Maybe I made it look easy, but it was really hard. I’d just go as fast as I could and jump as high as I could and hope for the best.”

Drexler admits early on he was motivated by David Lattin, the former Texas Western center whose rim-bending slam at the outset of the 1966 national championship game against “Rupp’s Runts” of legendary Kentucky coach Adolph Rupp set the tone for the Miners’ seminal victory. Lattin, who had been a high school All-American at Worthing, occasionally would attend UH practices and admonish the Cougars for not dunking more, a sentiment Guy Lewis also heartedly endorsed.

“’Why didn’t you dunk that, Judge?’ Lattin would tell us,” Drexler said. “Use your athleticism!’ Coach Lewis wanted us to get the highest-percentage shot, and there nothing’s higher than a dunk. Teams would know we were coming in there, and they still couldn’t stop us. It was demoralizing for them. It gave you a psychological edge.”

Drexler remembers the Pacific game well and sheeplishly admits, “They were a bit outmanned.” Bonk counted 29 Cougar dunks in the 112-58 romp.

The next morning Drexler saw the “Phi Slama Jama” reference and “immediately loved it. Tommy was a clever guy.”

The nickname took on a life of its own. Signs started appearing at Hofheinz, and Frank Schultz, the school’s sports information director, had Phi Slama Jama T-shirts made by the hundreds. Bonk admits he considered some marketing options of his own.

“I think Phi Slama Jama pajamas would have worked,” he said, “but I never pursued it.”

The pinnacle of that season would be Houston’s Final Four semifinal victory over Louisville, when the Cougars beat Louisville’s aforementioned Doctors of Dunk at their own name, only to suffer the infamous championship-game upset loss to North Carolina State on, irony of ironies, a Lorenzo Charles put-back dunk as time expired.

Bonk, who left Houston to cover the Lakers for the Los Angeles Times in the fall of 1983, probably has fonder memories of that ultimately ill-fated trip to Albuquerque, N.M., than the Cougars do. Upon arriving, the team presented him with the same nylon Phi Slama Jama jacket the players were proudly sporting.

“Mine had ‘Author’ embroidered on the chest where they had their names,” Bonk said.

Before a Lakers game at the Forum a year or so later, Bonk was working courtside when he was approached by three young guys dressed like Kurt Rambis (thick-rimmed glasses, baggy clothes; they called themselves the “Rambis Youth”). One of them said, “Hey, dude, you’re in Trivial Pursuit.”

Sure enough, in the sports version of the popular game there it was: “What school’s 1982-83 cagers did writer Tommy Bonk dub the Phil Slama Jama Fraternity?”

Bonk had the card encased in plastic, and it’s now displayed in his San Francisco home in a place of honor.

“On a shelf in the bathroom,” he said, “next to my Eric Cartman (the South Park character) driver’s license and my Tiger Woods bobblehead doll.”

Bonk retired as the Los Angeles Times’ golf writer in 2008 to work for Golf Digest Digital and today posts blogs four times a week on his own site, thomasbonk.com. He also writes for masters.com.